Dave Karpf wrote about the Silicon Valley Edgelords’ plan for world domination and it’s important: Balaji Srinivasan’s 2022 book, The Network State is a blueprint of sorts. It is the wild fever-dream of Silicon Valley’s libertarian investor-class. It imagines a near future in which online communities use the blockchain to opt out of government and form their own competing “network states.” It’s essentially just Galt’s Gulch, plus blockchain. If you want to know what the Tech Barons are attempting to replace democracy with, then it is important to take Srinivasan seriously. But Balaji is not a serious person. The book is manifestly ridiculous. It is a blueprint drawn in crayon. Balaji’s ideas are stunningly undercooked, offered with such conspiratorial self-certainty that you have to wonder whether anyone has bothered to ask him if he’s alright.
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I was unhappy earlier today about all the media attention to some Arizona voters who told a focus group that they think Donald Trump is just dreamy. It’s the same old same old form the media who are once again working feverishly to pump up Trump’s popularity. But Philip Bump at the Washington Post had some interesting information that indicates that an Arizona focus group may not have its finger on the pulse: YouGov measures the popularity of past presidents among all Americans. And a pair of professors conducts a survey asking members of the American Political Science Association to evaluate presidential “greatness.” At the upper end of the spectrum, there’s general agreement. Abraham Lincoln is the most positively viewed president among both groups. George Washington and Franklin D. Roosevelt are near the top as well. There’s some deviation on John F. Kennedy, who’s third on YouGov’s list and 10th among the presidential scholars. But that deviation is nothing compared with what happens at the other end of the spectrum. The worst-performing past president among the general public is James K.
Keep leopards from eating your faces He Who Would Be King on Saturday gave dubious legal advice to those who would do him harm. That’s not what he intended. He meant to declare that no law can touch him, to issue a royal corollary to his Fifth Avenue declaration. But the chaos inside his brain case instead issued a statement with a dual meaning that escaped a man once nicked by an assassin before he becoming legally bulletproof. The statement is not original. Donald Trump picked it up online like a dime on the sidewalk. One of his believers likely found it first and dropped it there weeks ago. The quote is from a movie on Napoleon, not likely by the emperor himself. But it’s serviceable enough for a naked emperor to pick up, try on, and walk around in. Today is Presidents Day, so presumably the would-be-king will not be celebrating. But those opposed to a return of the monarchy will be anti-celebrating “Not My President’s Day” today across the country: These demonstrations are being organized by the 50501 Movement, which stands for “50 protests. 50 states.
Axios conducted a focus group that I’m seeing touted all over the media as if it’s the Oracle of Delphi. I’ll let you be the judge if anyone should take this seriously: Every Arizona swing voter in our latest Engagious/Sago focus groups said they approve of President Trump’s actions since taking office — and most also support Elon Musk’s efforts to slash government. Public opinion can constrain presidents when Congress does not. But these 11 voters — all of whom backed Joe Biden in 2020 but switched to Trump last November — said they’re good with Trump aggressively testing disruptive, expansionist expressions of presidential power that are piling up in court challenges. It’s needed to “get America back on track,” one participant said. One notable area of disagreement with Trump: The idea of the U.S. displacing Palestinians and taking over and redeveloping Gaza. These swing voters want Trump to stick with Americans’ needs inside the U.S. Some would like to see him do more, sooner, to rein in consumer costs.
President Trump says USAID is rife with fraud. But Andrew Natsios, a Republican former administrator of USAID, calls that “utter nonsense.” Natsios says USAID is “the most accountable aid agency in the world.” https://t.co/4MwUokAAdX pic.twitter.com/X7hLBiUlYg — 60 Minutes (@60Minutes) February 17, 2025 > Elon Musk says he would spend millions in primaries on anybody who opposes President Trump. pic.twitter.com/TdroLJXXa4 — 60 Minutes (@60Minutes) February 17, 2025 Natsios describes himself as a very conservative Republican and strict constructionist who believes that we may be headed to a constitutional crisis if Trump decides to ignore the orders of the Supreme Court. What happens then, he’s asked? “I don’t know,” he replies. None of us do. Trump and his henchmen, especially Musk, are now in something of a fugue state, seemingly beyond reason. They’re dragging massive numbers of people along with them including the Republicans in Washington to appear to believe that they really do have the power to change reality.
No it’s bullshit. This is the Great Replacement Theory which Musk signed on to some time ago. For a quick refresh on what this is about: The Great replacement in the United States is the American version of a white nationalist far-right conspiracy theory that racial minorities are displacing the traditional white American population and taking control of the nation. Versions of the theory “have become commonplace” in the Republican Party of the United States, and have become a major issue of political debate. It also has stimulated violent responses including mass murders. It resembles the Great Replacement theory promoted in Europe, but has its origins in American nativism around 1900. According to Erika Lee, in 1894 the old stock Yankee upper-class founders of the Immigration Restriction League were, “convinced that Anglo-Saxon traditions, peoples, and culture were being drowned in a flood of racially inferior foreigners from Southern and Eastern Europe.” A May 2022 poll by Yahoo! News and YouGov found that 61% of people who voted for Donald Trump in the 2020 U.S.
Newly-leaked documents reveal a crew of military academics pitching the US National Security Council a series of extreme strategies for Ukraine, from IED’s inspired by Iraqi insurgents to sabotaging Russia’s infrastructure to propaganda “from ISIS’ playbook.” Conceived under the auspices of the UK’s University of St. Andrews, the plans were outsourced through third parties to ensure “plausible deniability.” Explosive leaked documents reviewed by The Grayzone show how a shady transatlantic collective of academics and military-intelligence operatives conceived schemes which would […]
The post Secret terror blueprints for US NSC to ‘help Ukraine resist’ exposed first appeared on The Grayzone.
The post Secret terror blueprints for US NSC to ‘help Ukraine resist’ exposed appeared first on The Grayzone.
Emil Bove, Game Master For no particular reason. Here’s an easy-to-follow piece of advice. If you don’t want to be called a Nazi, don’t act like a Nazi. Or Jigsaw. Here’s the intro from Reuters: A U.S. federal prosecutor agreed on Friday to file a motion to dismiss criminal corruption charges against New York City Mayor Eric Adams to spare other career staff from potentially being fired for refusing to do so, sources briefed on the matter told Reuters. Acting Deputy Attorney General Emil Bove told the department’s career public integrity prosecutors in a meeting on Friday that they had an hour to decide among themselves who would file the motion, the sources said. The volunteer was Ed Sullivan, a veteran career prosecutor, who agreed to alleviate pressure on his colleagues in the department’s public integrity section, two sources said. Sullivan did not capitulate, someone familiar with the meeting told Reuters. He was coerced, and to his colleagues “a hero” who spared them. So Bove set up one of those torture rooms from the Saw franchise, minus the blood.
Trump likes them intimidated. They eagerly comply. Me and my sharpie are signing a ‘zecutive order changing the name of Donald Trump to Donald Toadstool. You will henceforth use my preferred designation. His Insecure Highness has enacted several measures since reentering the Oval Office as non-joking tests of fealty. By your bending the knee to his mighty will he shall know you either as loser or foe. It’s Toadstool’s way of getting you to blurt out, “Thank you, sir! May I have another.” Like loyalty oaths and insisting followers publicly declaring that he won the 2020 election, it’s about getting people to submit to his dominance moves. Or as I picture it, getting littler dogs to roll over on their backs and pee in the air in submission. Toadstool’s mind is so far gone that it’s not clear if he really gives a rat’s ass if the world accepts that with a few strokes of his sharpie he’s changed the 400-year-old name of the Gulf of Mexico. What matters is whether he can compel your obedience by uttering “Gulf of America.” For that, he doesn’t need to think. It’s all instinct.
I know you don’t like X posts on here and neither do I. But Bluesky still doesn’t have the capability of rendering videos in the blog so there’s not much I can do about it. I would never expect you to sit through a full JD Vance speech but it’s important to at least see some of the clips. It’s just shocking , even for him: He’s saying this in Europe, not Arkansas. Apparently, he really wants to reassure China and Russia that we are with them and encouraging them to do whatever’s necessary to keep them in power in case Americans or Europeans might have other ideas. You really should watch this one: The Trump administration is demanding that everyone in the government say that the 2020 election was stolen and firing people who held the J6 insurrectionists to account. I know hypocrisy has been retired as a concept but this is too much. There’s more unfortunately: JD Vance's speech in Munich sounds like it was literally written by the Kremlin pic.twitter.com/YV1hJlyS48 — Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) February 14, 2025 Then there’s this clown: REPORTER: You have focused on what Ukraine is giving up.